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Garner et al. 2005
Garner, T.W., Taylor, B.T., Gaussiran, T.L., Coley, W.R. and Hairston, M.R. (2005). On the distribution of ionospheric electron density observations. Space Weather 3: doi: 10.1029/2005SW000169. issn: 1542-7390.

For most space scientists, the general expectation of ionospheric measurements is that if properly binned, observations will obey a normal or Gaussian distribution. This paper challenges this assumption and argues that a lognormal distribution can better describe ionospheric densities. It presents a simple mathematical argument for ionospheric density observations obeying a lognormal distribution. To demonstrate the efficacy of the lognormal distribution, a sample distribution of total ion densities is presented and is compared with a lognormal distribution characterized by parameters estimated from the data. This distribution of DMSP observations fits a lognormal distribution with a probability plot correlation coefficient (PPCC) of 0.99932. The PPCC is the linear correlation between the ordered distribution and ordered statistical medians and measures how well a given set of values conforms to a given distribution. When the PPCC = 1, the distribution perfectly fits the data. When binned by solar activity (on the basis of the F10.7 cm proxy) and geomagnetic latitude, over 95.3% of the binned observations follow a lognormal distribution with a PPCC over 0.9. Since the topside electron densities tend to obey a lognormal distribution, the existing metrics for forecast performance need to be revised.

BACKGROUND DATA FILES

Abstract

Keywords
Ionosphere, Plasma temperature and density, Ionosphere, Topside ionosphere, Ionosphere, Instruments and techniques, topside density, DMSP measurements, density distribution, ionospheric variability
Journal
Space Weather
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
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